Current printers and copiers have the ability to print and insert cover sheets, colored banners or other inserts to sets, subsets, or chapters of print files. The printer or copier feeds the cover or slip-sheets, banners, or other inserts from separate paper trays at the proper times, which are automatically interleaved with the normal sequential output of the printed or copy sheets in a print job. For example, a printer may be a shared output device in a network having multiple users located at various computing devices. The cover sheets, banners, and the like conveniently separate each of the users printed output in a stack of printed materials accumulating at the shared printer. Furthermore, the cover sheets, banners, and the like may provide identifying information, such as person, source of origin, print job number, and the like.
The impact of printing undesirable content is considerable. For example, in the year 2000, there were an estimated 219 million ink jet printers and 200 million laser printers worldwide. Revenues for ink jet cartridges are expected to continue at a double-digit growth rate for the next five years. Moreover, revenues in the year 2000 for ink jet cartridges were $13.9B, while $8.5B for toner cartridges. Additionally, tab sheets or colored banners are usually more expensive than ordinary commercial grade printer/copier paper. As usage of printed material grows worldwide, the printing of such additional content becomes a wasteful consumption of the print medium materials, such as ink cartridges, toner cartridges, paper, and the like, which increases the overall costs of printing.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a method and apparatus for separating and identifying printable content from hardcopy output devices, such as printers and copiers.